Toni Stone
401 Buck Hollow Rd.
Fairfax, Vt. 05454
SUDDEN VISITORS Nov. 19, 1998
there they were dressed in brown. moving in tandem,
careful to keep the twenty foot rule, each would stay in close collaboration with another, but not too close.
all brown, they blended with, late autumn horizons and dried beige grasses in the garden.
like dancers, lightly placing feet, they flowed around the frozen asparagus bed finding berries and eating crispy seeds.
they were looking intently in the direction of windows. we were watching them from those windows.
we were only fifteen feet away.
it was amazing to us.
careful to move so slowly behind windows, we were grateful to see all three deer.
they were so-up-close to the window, but in the garden. we were watching, we saw every long limbed move.
they were watching us, like angels somebody sent for,
standing right there, from someplace else. we were watching from the pink skin world of chrome and radio stations.
straining, trying to stand as still as they could…gawking out the big window, watching hard so they didn’t disappear…
brown-on-brown, standing soundless, so still you couldn’t see them if your eyes let go one minute.
long brown twiggy legs, the same color as sunflower stems, gone gold in the frost.
foreground and background hardly a difference.
what a wonder. what a privilege. how hard to believe this.
we had been planning the work day, when suddenly,
out the office window, they were so close just feet away.
the days work immediately became watching them in awe.
thinking deep, what it could be to live outside, in the winter, dressed like that.
how friendly for them to come so close… how exuberant to see them.
how happy to write about them .
glad for such a visit.
moments turned to half-hours. sudden movement on our part scared them outside the window.
too hard to be so still.
we got back to the people world.
deer moved quickly to the woods and disappeared.
later, we look at pictures from Steve’s camera and relive that quiet time of outside creatures, inside near.
